Cardiovascular Daily wraps up the top cardiology news of the week

Winter holidays together boost body weight by 0.7% for Americans, most of which happens during Christmas week, according to a year-long study tracking people with wireless scales, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Americans in the three-country study continued to gain weight until May, then started to shed it until late October, when scale readings started to climb again.

"Advising a patient to have better self-control over the holidays is one approach," the researchers wrote. But, they suggested, "It might be better to advise patients that although up to half of holiday weight gain is lost shortly after the holidays, half the weight gain appears to remain until the summer months or beyond."

"Of course, the less one gains, the less one then has to worry about trying to lose it."

Wearable fitness trackers might not help weight loss over time, investigators for the randomized IDEA trial reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Among overweight and obese adults, a standard intervention without the devices actually led to greater weight loss over 24 months than an intervention with fitness trackers (5.9 kg versus 3.5 kg, P=0.003).

While "a bit surprising," author John M. Jakicic, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh, told MedPage Today. "these findings are very important because they suggest that, just because in theory these technologies should help with health behavior change and improve health outcomes, this may not be the case for every person and under all conditions."

Inactive teens usually become sedentary young adults, a nationally-representative study following tenth graders through to their first year after graduation found.

Fewer than 9% of participants got at least the recommended 60 minutes per day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, researchers reported in Pediatrics, and low levels of physical engagement in high school significantly predicted low physical activity levels afterward too.

"This group is unique because they are experiencing big and important changes during this period including mental, psychological, environmental, and contextual changes," author Kaigang Li, PhD, MEd, of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, told MedPage Today. "At the same time, this group of young people starts to learn how to handle their lives, behaviors, and lifestyles independently the first time."

That "international alignment" on heart failure treatment guidelines was no coincidence, an article in Circulation explained.

"Each writing committee surveyed the evidence independently and constructed similar recommendations, which were then shared between the organizations," it said. The updated American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association heart failure management guideline should be released in 2017.

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